- Windows on Steam Deck, it's here.
On Thursday, Valve released the drivers that we needed
to run the operating system that they have spent years
trying to make sure we won't need.
Linux users have literally begged us not to do this,
or at least not to recommend it.
But they forgot one simple fact.
I own this device.
It's mine.
So whatever I do, what I want.
And besides, even I don't know
if I would recommend this yet.
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We will talk about how we got to this point,
but I don't wanna keep you guys waiting
and I'm gonna dive right in, starting with desktop controls.
You can use either the right joystick
or the right track pad to move the mouse cursor around.
And I gotta say right outta the gate,
having this track pad here compared to something
like the joy X off on the in Aya Neo,
wow, Is that ever a lot better.
But there's one thing I immediately noticed missing,
push to tap.
How is that not a thing?
No, instead, and this is sort of intuitive.
You actually use the right trigger for a left click,
and the left trigger for right click.
Pretty much every other handheld I've seen,
defaults the other way around.
Left is left, right is right.
But it seems like Valve is of the mind that
the dominant hand should be the one
that is the most often clicked.
Okay. How do I scroll down the page out?
It's probably left.
Yeah, there we go.
Left analog stick.
Okay. We just brought up an on-screen keyboard
by pushing down on the DPAD.
I'm gonna close Steam for now.
We can use the touch screen as well.
I guess that's worth mentioning.
Oh wait.
No, you need Steam running in order to wait.
Nope. My mouse cursor's back.
The right joystick doesn't work for it anymore though.
Only the track pad does.
Basically, there's two control schemes.
There's the Windows default, which allows you to use
this as a track pad and yeah.
Is still right to left and left, right.
Or if you have Steam launched, it'll actually
treat the entire controller as a Steam controller
and you can use the joystick to control the mouse as well.
Now that I've got Steam launched again,
let's try to launch an application.
Okay, is it?
I've seen this on other handhelds as well.
For whatever reason, UAC prompts disable
whatever software is allowing you to joystick to mouse.
On the Steam Deck though,
at least you can still use the, okay,
I swear, the touchpad worked a second to go.
Now it's not working.
To be clear, a lot of these annoyances
are kind of universal.
Whenever you're trying to use Windows
on a handheld device, it's just very imperfect experience.
Let's have a look at how this SOC appears
in CPU-Z, since we've got it.
AMD Ryzen, we don't know exactly what kind.
Custom APU 0405.
Super cool.
Nope. Does not know that this is LPDDR5.
All right then, how about GPU-Z?
Same thing, has no idea what to make of this mess.
GPU clock, zero megahertz.
Custom APU 0405, fair enough.
GPU, custom GPU 0405
Picks up the memory speed at least.
Doesn't seem to indicate in any way
that this memory is shared between the GPU and CPU.
Although it does note that 1.2 gigabytes of it
is hardware reserved, which would be
what's reserved for our GPU.
Wifi works.
Bluetooth appears to be here.
Actually, I should fire up device manager.
Clearly all the drivers are not working yet.
Unknown devices, multimedia controller.
Multimedia controller would be the onboard audio.
So the 3.5 millimeter jack
and the speakers do not work.
So you can use Bluetooth,
or you can use a Type-C to headphone adapter, for now.
I think we should launch a game.
And of course, we have a second Steam Deck.
I can already tell that this is running
like absolute dog poo on Windows compared to Linux.
It's not even close.
It's not even just that the FPS is lower.
It's just a difference in responsiveness
and like stutterinesss.
Super unresponsive.
- [Anthony] Funny while I was testing this,
with the haptics going, I thought that the speaker
was going for some reason.
- Yeah.
- [Anthony] Because the haptics are so weak.
- The haptics are, well, there's no haptics.
It's just the vibration in the touch pads.
- [Anthony] Yeah.
- So they've tuned that in Linux, so it doesn't feel
so like kind of cheap and ugly sounding,
but in Windows, clearly, that same tuning
hasn't taken place.
Well, how about on Windows?
What does the Steam button and the overlay button do?
Big fat load and nothing.
- [Anthony] I mean the Steam button
should pull up the Steam overlay or something, but...
- Oh, oh, it does.
It does. It pulls up the Steam Overlay
which does allow me to exit the game.
So it's just the quick access menu button
that doesn't do anything.
Okay. That's good.
Obviously it's a less comprehensive Steam Overlay.
Let's try something else.
I have not played Elden Ring yet.
So far, launch time looks pretty similar.
I started the Windows once, lately before.
that's a solid Linux win right there.
- [Anthony] That doesn't look right on the Windows side.
- [Linus] No, it really doesn't.
- [Anthony] When I testing it earlier,
the loading screens are only 16 by nine.
So the actual background, like the game assets loading in
could be seen in the seams
at the top and bottom of the screen.
- Oh hilarious.
Let's try Borderless Windowed.
I've had better luck with GOG and some kit.
What? Hello?
Weird.
Oh. - [Anthony] Oh, Hey.
- Hey, we're back.
Time to not mess with that again.
I'm loading up a new game here
because we did all the benchmarking on this Steam account
where we're actually a little bit into the game,
but I wanted to be able to play them
side by side with you guys.
So, we got a new account for the Linux machine
and we wanted to be able
to just switch back and forth between them.
Okay. Wow. Big Picture has work to do.
I mean, Valve has said, that they're going
to adapt Big Picture based on the SteamOS,
Steam Deck Interface.
Like this, oh man.
Night and day.
So much better.
- [Anthony] There it is.
You can see the seams.
- [Linus] Oh that's weird.
- [Anthony] This is a famously bad port.
- Linux for the win for loading times again.
- [Anthony] Wow. His Windows really that far behind?
- Oh shoot. I didn't open frame view.
This is another thing that I'm not expecting
to be a great experience on the Steam Deck.
Other handhelds have a button
to minimize the game and jump to the desktop.
I suspect Valve has integrated no such functionality.
I mean, I don't need framed you to tell me that's terrible.
I've read about hitches and stutters in this game
but this is unbelievable.
Valve apparently used the fact that they are translating
DirectX to Vulcan to implement
a pre-shader compilation routine
that prevents it from starting.
The crazy thing about Windows though,
is that this isn't even behaving like
on the fly shader compiling.
Like, it should stop doing it.
- [Anthony] It should.
- [Linus] After I do a full rotation.
- [Anthony] But it doesn't.
- And so the fact that we're running this translation layer
actually results in better smoothness.
I think it's time for us to stop the side by side comparison
and get into the empirical data then.
We ran benchmarks on three great on Deck games,
and Linux users can breathe the side of relief
because SteamOS handily outperformed Windows
Particularly in Hitman 3, where SteamOS gives playable,
if inconsistent frame rates.
While Windows average is a painful 19 FPS.
Doom Eternal hit a 60 FPSs average on SteamOS
while Windows was stuck in the high 40s.
And Elden ring famously far more playable on Deck
than on Windows, pulls ahead in terms of frame rate.
And as you guys saw, didn't suffer from the same stuttering
that the PC port has treated Windows gamers too.
Our Swacket don't suffer either, by the way, lttstore.com.
But what about controls outside of Steam?
We already saw that launching Steam
takes over the Deck's controller.
Can we do the same in say, an emulator?
What did you put on here?
- [Anthony] I just put on RetroArch.
Oh crap.
I don't have screen cap.
It did this in testing too.
For whatever reason, RetroArch.
What you're seeing on your screen is not
what I'm seeing on this screen.
This screen shows the desktop.
- Oh, beautiful.
Oh my God.
Come on RetroArch.
I just, I mean, this could be a Steam controller issue.
How do I go back if my controller's
not allowing me to go back.
Wait. Oh, and this is off now.
Wait, what?
Back, instead of going back.
- [Anthony] Yup.
- Negatively toggles a setting and then confirm
activates the setting.
That is the strangest behavior I think I've ever seen
out of a controller ever.
- [Anthony] Is Steam still running?
- Yes.
- [Anthony] That might be the problem.
- I don't even know if I'm gonna be able
to close this software.
There's no task manager button or control alt delete button,
like you would see on a Windows optimized handheld.
That that's the kind of thing that you could probably bind.
I mean, the Steam controller is infinitely customizable.
It's one of the best things about it.
But, Anthony, I don't think I could close retro arch
because I can't go back.
This is crazy, X and Y will sometimes go down
or up and down multiple items in the menu.
And sometimes just one, see here, it does just one.
What is happening?
- [Anthony] Oh, you activated the onscreen keyboard.
- [Linus] I did.?
- [Anthony] Yes. You can't see it, but I can.
Unless there's an escape key on that.
No, I don't think that - Press again to quit.
Yes.
- [Anthony] Full disclosure, I expected that to happen.
- Oh, thanks Anthony.
Well, this is just as bad.
Back doesn't go back.
How do I go back?
B is trying to close RetroArch.
- [Anthony] The default control scheme in Windows
without Steam running for the Steam Deck,
is that that key is escape.
- [Linus] So is that a Valve issue
or is that a Windows issue?
- [Anthony] That would be
a Valve's controller mapping issue.
Now, normally that makes sense for navigating Windows
because the up and down arrows are just like the..
- [Linus] Yeah.
- [Anthony] the DPAD is the up and down arrows,
left and right.
- But I guess...
- [Anthony] So you can navigate everything
with the buttons pretty well.
- That probably why we have an Xbox controller here.
- [Anthony] Right.
- Because now B is back
because it's picked up as a controller,
not as a Windows pointer device.
- [Anthony] Yeah. So, I think RetroArch
is gonna have to add a controller definition file
or something to hook into it.
Like they do with the Steam Deck
and with the Xbox 360 controller and Xbox One.
- Right.
Well, will the game work?
- [Anthony] The game should work.
- Okay. Let's try the game then, at least.
(mumbles)
What? It doesn't work.
Even in game its still in, oh man.
All right. Well, I still want to know about the latency.
I mean, I guess it'll be fine.
It's just Windows.
- [Anthony] I mean, it should be
- Oh yeah.
I mean, this feels great.
- [Anthony] Mostly I just wanted to show off the fact
that the controls are...
- Hot, garbage and broken.
- [Anthony] Yes.
- Got it.
- [Anthony] So, better use Steam.
- Yeah, pretty much.
Oh no, not charging Chuck where.
Oh, I wanna get up there.
Ah, balls.
And there are a lot of other things to keep in mind
if you wanna run Windows on Deck.
For one, you're not able to dual boot SteamOS and Windows
until Valve releases the final SteamOS installer
with support for this baked in.
I already mentioned, there isn't an audio driver
for the speakers or the 3.5 millimeter headphone check yet.
But audio via USB-C or Bluetooth does work.
Apparently a driver will be coming for that sooner
rather than later.
Well, we don't have an ETA for is things
like the brightness slider fix.
Okay. It works fine sometimes.
And sometimes it doesn't respond to the full drag.
- [Anthony] Yeah. So you need to drag it back and forth
towards the end that you want to go to.
So if you wanna get it brighter, you need to go to max
and drag it back and forth.
You wanna go darker,
You need to, drag back and forth.
- [Linus] I think if goes slow, its fine.
So it might be an acceleration issue with the
touch to mouse input detection or whatever.
I don't know the proper technical terms for it.
But it seems to be that if you go fast
it doesn't make it the whole way, which could be
a touchscreen responsiveness issue in Windows.
I'm sure it's fixable but we don't know when
or if that will ever be fixed.
And there's also the much larger problem
where the Deck doesn't like to come out of sleep in Windows.
Either it takes forever or never wakes up.
So you'll wanna disable sleep
unless you're into hard powering off
in order to get back into Windows.
But that's not a great experience for a handheld device.
What's more, when you go to actually install Windows,
you're gonna notice that the display is rotated 90 degrees.
That's actually pretty common for devices like this
because they often use panels
that were designed originally for tablets.
It just means that until you get to the Windows desktop,
you're gonna have to deal with that.
You won't have any wifi
so you'll have to install without a product key
if you don't have a Type-C ethernet dongle.
And speaking of, you're probably gonna want a Type-C
to USB-A adapter, or ideally a multi-port dongle
like this one, so that you can plug in a USB flash drive
and a keyboard and mouse.
It can be done without but it's definitely not as seamless.
All of which raises the big question here.
Why would anyone want to run Windows on the Steam Deck?
Well, I can think of a few reasons.
Even ignoring familiarity with the interface and the apps.
Access to Xbox services comes to mind.
While alternative launchers and storefronts
for epic game store and GOG are available on Linux,
Xbox still isn't.
And that means there are some games that you simply
cannot play on SteamOS right now.
Even ignoring anti-cheat problems.
And you're certainly not gonna get access to game pass
unless you're streaming from a Windows device
or from Microsoft zone servers.
I've also personally run into some very frustrating bugs
while gaming on the Deck.
I just completed a run through of Horizon Zero Dawn,
start to finish on my personal deck.
And I saw everything from drops down to one FPS
for extended periods.
Like I'm talking 10 30 seconds at a time,
to hard game crashes back to the Steam Interface.
To even black screens that necessitated
a full system shut down.
This raise is serious questions for me
about the thoroughness of Valve's game verification program.
Horizon Zero Dawn is a great on Deck game
but my experience was anything but great.
And I sincerely doubt that if Sony had actually
been involved in this certification process,
they would've signed off on it
being advertised as great on Deck.
In fact, there's a great blog post on gaming on Linux
from the lead developer of FAudio, which is a core
component of Proton, the compatibility layer
that allows Windows games to run on Linux,
criticizing Valve's collaboration or lack thereof
with third party developers.
So if Valve is just YOLOing it, what's the process?
There are only so many hours in a day
and Valve seems to be validating a lot of freaking games.
Based on my experience with Horizon Zero Dawn,
what I suspect they're doing is
they're just firing up the game, playing early areas,
which in many games tend not to be as demanding and going,
"Yep. Seems good," rubber stamp.
And I actually didn't have any issues
in the first five hours of my play through
for Horizon Zero Dawn.
But by the end, I was getting crashing or stuttering,
about every 30 minutes or so.
Not a great experience.
Other than that though, SteamOS is objectively
the much more polished experience.
The quick access menu with its convenient diagnostics
and controls is conspicuously absent from Windows
and even basic functionality like charging,
still seems to have issues in Windows.
We actually observed our Steam Deck discharging
while plugged in, which is something
that I have never seen running SteamOS.
So Valve is allowing users to run Windows.
Even facilitating it by providing drivers
and public help docs, good guy Valve, a hundred percent.
And we're gonna have those linked down below
if you wanna do it yourself.
But the roughness of the experience does make me wonder,
are they ever going to put in the effort that it would take
to make it as smooth as SteamOS?
My gut feeling is no, which makes me wonder,
how much of the performance difference we saw is down
to a lack of a optimization.
I mean, theoretically, the same hardware should perform
very similarly across Windows and Linux.
And this, our results were not even close.
Now, admittedly, that could be
as much AMD's fault as Valve's.
And the Steam Deck also features a very unusual architecture
for a Windows machine, with the CPU and GPU course,
sharing common memory.
I'm sure SteamOS, on the other hand, was carefully tuned
to account for this.
I just feel like there was a lot of Windows performance
left on the table here.
And our investigation today has left us
with more questions than answers.
The one answer we have right now though
is that we wouldn't recommend Windows on the Steam Deck.
At least not in its current state.
So, if your must have games don't work on SteamOS,
you might just have to pony up for a competing handheld.
That is at least until Valve makes dual booting possible.
Which is something we're planning to explore,
along with a two terabyte internal storage upgrade
to the Deck.
So make sure you are subscribed for that.
And make sure you're subscribed to hear
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Thanks for watching guys.
Go check out our initial review of the Steam Deck
for more Decky goodness.
It still blows my mind that they managed
to ship these things, especially, for this price.